LBC & SBC News By Jerry Love, Director of Planned Giving ALEXANDRIA – The Louisiana Baptist Foundation Board of Trustees met for its regular quarterly Trustees meeting on Feb. 3. This is the first of four meetings for the Board for this year. The majority of board members are returning, continuing in the first term commitment or finishing a second 3 year term. The Trustees welcomed its only new member for this year, Terry Shirley of DeRidder. Shirley has served the Foundation board in the past from 2002 through 2007. During the morning Investment Committee meeting, the various portfolios of the Foundation were reviewed in respect to performance and potential adjustments to asset allocation. Barbara Bell led a review of the financial assets under management. As of December 31, 2014 the total assets managed by the LBF are $169,367,256.31 held in 2099 accounts on behalf of Baptist churches and ministries. Over the past ten years the assets held by the foundation have increased by 63.5% from $103,575,660 at the end of 2004. Lee Morris of Graystone Consulting, the LBF’s investment consultant, was present for the meeting and delivered his performance summary as well as general expectations for the coming year. Morris … [Read more...]
Students instructed to walk by faith, not by sight at CEC
LBC & SBC News By Brian Blackwell. Message Staff Writer ALEXANDRIA – Robby Gallaty presented students with a challenge – close their eyes and wonder about a life without sight. “Imagine if you were born into this world blind, do you know what that would be like?” Gallaty said to 675 students during the Collegiate Evangelism Conference. “That’s the world Bartimaeus came into.” Citing Mark 10:46-52, Gallaty challenged the students to do as Blind Bartimaeus did to receive eyesight – walk by faith and not by sight. To do this, Gallaty said students can do three things found in this passage. They are we should not be discouraged by the crowd, we should discard the cloaks in our life and we must surrender everything to Christ. Though Gallaty has never succumb to literal blindness, he told the students of the first 26 years of his life when he was spiritually without sight. A regular attender of church as a child and teenager, Gallaty said he was very religious but did not have a relationship with the Lord. Once he was on his own as a student at William Carey College in Hattiesburg, Miss., Gallaty in 1995 was introduced to Christ by Jeremy Brown, one of the few people who ever attempted doing so on … [Read more...]
Women encouraged to ‘pour themselves out’ in service to God
LBC & SBC News By Holly Jo Linzay, Regional Reporter “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” II Timothy 4:6b-7 PINEVILLE – God is calling us to live sacrificially and to pour ourselves out in service to Him. “There is nothing more exciting than to be poured out for God. There is nothing better than to be in the center of God’s will,” Jaye Martin, the keynote speaker, told the women gathered at the Kaleidoscope conference. More than 270 women were challenged to pour themselves out in service to God at the Kaleidoscope conference Feb. 7 at First Baptist Church in Pineville. In order to be “poured out” for the Lord, Martin said, “We must give ourselves in service and sacrifice. But God only uses a clean vessel.” Kaleidoscope is a Cooperative Program-fueled event sponsored by the Louisiana Baptist Convention Women’s Missions & Ministry. During the day-long conference, Martin, president of Jaye Martin Ministries in Houston, referenced how Paul was pouring out his life for Christ in his writings to Timothy in II Timothy chapter 4. “A missing element in … [Read more...]
